News Spam is making computers sick

So it's not just you that's sick of spam - it's making your hardware ill as well! This from the Beeb:

Spam overload is making computers sick and driving users mad.
Research commissioned by Yahoo finds that the average British PC has nine 'sick days' per year, two more than the average for workers.

Six of these are wasted battling with spam and three more days are lost due to viruses.

Nearly half of British computer users find dealing with junk e-mails more stressful than traffic jams and the majority want service providers to act.

More here

 

I now use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, I have set the junk mail filter to High and voila, no more junk mail. No more cheap viagra, offers to enlarge certain parts of my anatomy, some exclusively male, some exclusively female (I must be listed as some sort of weird hamaphrodite on a database somewhere), no more cheap software and no reminders from banks I do not have accounts with to update my details. Spam away you w*nkers, it's not getting through.

 

What's your email address again? Ever heard of tempting the devil?

 

this summer i will be building an email client and server, which should theoretically take spam down by at least 90%. We all know of recurring spam, the penis enlargements thing, well if public keys, private keys, and ip address can be used to "test" email on a server, and to associate an IP with someone who is a known spammer, then servers could potentially cut the amount of spam substancially

im working on all the finer detail at the moment, but i think it'll work well!

 

My E-mail addresses are on my web sites for all to see and those are the addresses to which all the spam is sent. No doubt the addresses have been picked up by some bot or spider. I got very little unsolicited E-mail on my other, personal addresses.

Interesting that Yahoo did the research, at one point I could have cut out 90% of all my junk E-mail by just blocking everything from an @yahoo.com address.

 

any more details? from what you're saying i can only make the (rather ill informed) judgement that it won't work: spammers don't use static IP's for one thing. The IP they use often won't even be theres. Unchecking net cafe's are the simple end, IP spoofing is the more complicated end. from what you said it sounds far too simple to work... be interested to hear what you've been thinking of to combat those. I don't see what you mean with the public keys and private keys - how would you test, have all-encryped email with those not encrypted according to the private key rejected? This then closes the email system to ligitimate users too, and public/private keys go flying over most people's heads, so the implementation would have to be seamless - not with people having to decide and agree keys off their own backs.

Personally I think that the only current feasible ways to kill spam/email virusses are:
Compulsory user education - harder than it sounds, but if no-one responds to spam (people do, that's the horrible thing) then it'll just die - they do it to make money, if they can't make money they'll stop.
A central authority such as verisign authenticating email senders (for a price)... but that too closes the email system - which shouldnt happen in my view.

More of a good practice thing should be set up by ISPs, limiting number of messages that can be sent within a given time, but setting up your own mail server isn't that hard.

 

I agree.

I don't want to be like a annyoing sod. BUT!! adware is soooo DAMN ANNOYING!!! Since USA stopped spam emails by law, it seems that adware has taken off even in a bigger way. It's terrible, adware gets on your pc without you asking it 2. It's so annoying!!. I mean spam emails aint as bad, alot of isp have spam filters and block them. You can get norton anti spam thats very good. Also outlook 2003, is very good with its block mail filter. I wish a law came here and usa, junk mail to be a law, and adware. Any adware getting installed on pc without accepting it.

-Sc0rian

 

I've switched to Firefox, since IE was hijacked.. all the searchbars and homepage were replaced, and I haven't got the time/care to fix it.

Ever think of figuring out a spammers' static IP and dDOSsing the **** out of it?